Curt Leviant - Kafka's Son

K didn’t say a word. He didn’t say, See? He didn’t gloat. I took a deep breath. I had my identity back. A few stray palpitations quieted down. I wanted to sit but realized I was already sitting. Like I had wanted to stand in Jiri’s hospital room but then realized I was already standing.

I waited for K to speak. But he was looking out pensively into the middle distance. Perhaps this sudden change affected him too. What do I mean, perhaps? Of course it had. It had taken his breath away, as it had taken mine. Didn’t he need a glass of water?

“Shall I bring you something to drink?”

K shook his head.

What odd thoughts, images, ran through my head. I thought of the International K Society, the K Quarterly . Even your image is ubiquitous, I thought. Almost as widely disseminated as Einstein’s. And the adjective your name has shaped: K-esque.

“Well?” he said, a proud little gleam in his eyes.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes yes?”

I nodded.

“Then I am satisfied,” he said.

And then, as I realized that one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century stood before me, a warmth — not a bodily heat, but the excitation, heat, of intellectual energy — rose in me.

“And you’ve written over the years.” Not a question. A declaration. Affirmation.

He looked at me.

“You have, haven’t you? I hope you have. Will you show me?”

He still looked at me. He stared into my eyes. The intensity of his gaze increased, sharp, penetrating, ray-like. As if he were warning me to desist. I turned away — and stopped asking.

Then something, a rustle, a swoosh, a presence outside, in the hall, attracted my attention.

I looked to the door.

K’s door was slightly open, perhaps two or three inches. A quick, thin slice of a back of a head I’d seen a number of times in town flashed by. A waitress in a restaurant, receptionist in a museum? Strange, but when a face or the shape of a familiar head is seen away from its usual setting, we have difficulty placing it. Where do I know you from? is the question we usually ask. It’s amazing, even miraculous, to meet someone for a second time in a city where miracles have occurred, just like the miracles in K’s recent past, surviving his illness, surviving the war. It’s like seeing a train running backward or a scene in a film run in reverse. Time recaptured.

I jumped out of my seat, as if ejected from a fighter jet, and while talking with K, I ran to the door and opened it.

In mid-stride, away from the door that was now open, in midstride in the hallway, on her way to another room, the door just shut behind her. I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her. But I was certain it was a girl.

I returned to K’s room, apologized.

“Somehow she looked familiar. Do you know who she is?”

“I think you better ask Eva. That’s her department.”

I could see he didn’t want to tell me any more.

Then, to distract him (and me), I said:

“I once attended a K conference in Montreal some years ago sponsored by the International K Society, which I heard about while doing a film there. A strange thing happened in the auditorium. Actually two. During the first session, in the middle of a lecture on ‘The Metamorphosis’ entitled ‘Angst and Anxiety: Psychological Ramifications of Change,’ an old man in a beret just like yours, holding a walking stick, ambled down the aisle of the lecture hall, stared at the speaker, even raised his cane and called out, ‘Nonsense. It’s a comedy, you fool.’ Then he turned abruptly and walked out of the hall. Was that you, by any chance?”

“What year was it?” K asked.

“I was just out of college then. Probably 1971 or 1972.”

“No, it wasn’t me.”

“Why, what year were you in Montreal?”

“I was never in Montreal.”

“Then what difference does it make what year it was?”

“I just wanted to know what year I wasn’t there.” And K leaned back and laughed. “But I must say, the old chap imitated me quite well…. And he was quite right.”

“Okay. But later, during the afternoon session, something even stranger took place. It was during a break. I was in the hallway. An older woman approached, sort of tentatively, and looked at me. Then she drew closer, almost up to me. She blinked, moved her lips, and uttered a curt, ‘K!’ and slowly buckled. She fell to the floor in a faint. An attendant from the hotel came by and helped revive her. Luckily, a crowd had gathered and I was not the center of unwanted attention. I never attended another K conference again. I didn’t want to be gawked at, nor did I want to be distracted.”

“Did you ever find out who that woman was?” K asked.

“No.”

K looked over my head, nodded slowly, an enigmatic, dreamy smile on his face.

My God! I thought. If he is K, then K had a son. My dream wish for him was fulfilled.

“Wait a minute,” I burst out. “If you’re Jiri’s father, then Jiri is your son. Which makes me very happy that K had a son.”

K nodded. His eyes sparkled as if ironically praising my sentience.

“No wonder he had a signed copy of Meditation in his house.”

“I gave it to him years ago.”

“But the one in the other room is not signed.”

“I don’t autograph every book.”

“Does Eva know?”

“Know what?”

He knew very well what I meant.

“You know what I mean. This.”

But he did not reply. In my mind I heard his spokesman saying, K neither confirms nor denies this.

Now I understood why all the whispering, why Jiri and Betty spoke that strange language. Tara pilus. Tara glos. But I still didn’t understand who I was too old or too young for. Maybe K would know why Jiri and Betty spoke that language. Did Betty also know that Mr. Klein was K? That he was Jiri’s father? She must have known something; otherwise, why the secret tongue? But perhaps K knew nothing about Betty, so it was better not to ask.

“Now you understand why I said I have good news for you.”

“Can you imagine? About a week ago I dreamt that you told me.”

“I did?” He sounded like a surprised little boy. “What did I say?”

“I dreamt I was rebutting you about being Jiri’s father. I said people make all kinds of crazy claims here in Prague. And you said, ‘You mean like Karoly Graf who claims to be my son?’ Then I corrected you, saying: ‘Not your son, K’s son.’”

“I’m more careless in dreams,” K said with a laugh.

“In my dream I didn’t pay too much attention to your slip of the tongue. But had it happened in the real world, I would have caught it.”

“There is no such thing as the real world,” he said. “It’s all a dream.”

“But you just said you’re more careless in dreams.”

“Yes,” K said.

Was what I had just witnessed also a dream, a phantasmagoria prompted by extreme exhaustion, like those exhaustion-induced quick visions I wrote about before? If I could have looked at myself I would not have seen a man with a straight back. I would have seen a man shaped like a huge question mark. My lips, my tongue, my eyes, my brain were all question marks. Supple, bent, ready to spring. Ready to ask. But I held back. I didn’t want to intrude.

I was confident that Klein/K would tell me his story. Why was I so sure? It was the classic a fortiori reasoning. Which meant: how much the more so. The kal va-chomer of Talmudic disputation. If a man can lift fifty pounds, a fortiori, kal va-chomer , how much the more so, he can lift five pounds. If Klein had chosen to share his amazing secret with me, it stands to reason he would tell me how all this happened to him. Did he die and come back to life? No, impossible. We haven’t yet reached Messianic times and resurrection of the dead. Or did K not die at all? Was his illness a sham? And how is it that he had lived this long? And in total silence?